by Ashly Graham
Clarissa quailed; she could hardly breathe, and her heart was fit to burst at the realization that she was in the Royal Presence.
When the Queen raised a thick bejewelled finger from the lace coverlet and pointed—even so slight a movement appeared to cost her effort—the drones-in-waiting, for such they must have been, bowed and went to the table, where one of them put several of the plates onto a golden tray. He brought the tray back to the bed and, bowing again, proffered it to his sovereign, while the other drone helped her struggle into a sitting position against the damask pillows.
Ignoring the tray, the monarch scrutinized Clarissa from the tired old eyes in her puffy face. Prompted by a discreet cough from one of the drones, the young bee remembered that it was protocol to curtsey when in the presence of Her Majesty. This she did, not very well, and a long moment later the mountainous but still regal figure made an unintelligible noise, and twitched a heavily braceleted wrist.
The drones must have understood what the Queen meant, because the one with the tray stepped back from the bed and over to Clarissa. As he held the tray out to her, he was joined by the other who picked up a gold spoon, presented it to her handle first, and motioned that she should use it to sample one of the dishes.
Clarissa looked doubtfully at the golden platters. But the aroma of the royal jelly was most alluring, and she recalled that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before. When the drone-in-waiting with the tray frowned and pushed a plate forward, she took the spoon and scooped a little jelly into her mouth.
With a surge her appetite returned. The jelly was filled with an extraordinary array of flavours, which burst upon her palate and replaced her dread with rapture. Prompted again, Clarissa ate a little more; and when the plate wasn’t withdrawn, took larger mouthfuls while the drones themselves devoured her with their eyes. As soon as she’d finished the first plate, they indicated that she should begin on the next, and when the plates were empty they brought her more from the table. She forgot to wonder at her punishment, of being condemned to consume royal jelly in the presence of Her Royal Highness.
As she greedily ladled royal jelly into her mouth and her abdomen expanded, Clarissa observed that the Queen was monitoring her esurience from the four-poster bed with a grimace and twisted lips. Every time that Clarissa stopped eating, the drones-in-waiting, who were no longer paying attention to their sovereign, scowled at her until she continued. They did not bring her a chair, only more plates, and Clarissa, her gaze locked with the Queen’s, kept spooning. As soon as she’d scraped one dish clean there was another in her hands.
When eventually the table had no more royal jelly on it, the Queen Bee heaved a sigh, the velvet curtains were redrawn about her, and Clarissa, who still didn’t feel full, was taken back to her own room and put to bed.
The days went by but she knew nothing of them, and the passage of time was replaced by the lighting of an endless succession of candles. Instead of a cot in her room, Clarissa had been provided with a chaise longue in the Queen’s chamber, with cushions for pillows, on which she was fed royal jelly while the old lady watched.
There was no conversation between them, and nothing was permitted to interrupt the steady mechanical movement of Clarissa’s jaw, and the constant replenishment of the plates on the table by the ever watchful drones-in-waiting; until the time came for them both to sleep, and the curtains were drawn around the catafalque of the Queen’s bed.
Clarissa’s thoughts slowed and her memories faded, including recollection of her family. She no longer remembered the day of her single solo flight into the fields. Disconnected from the outer world, the only sensation she had was of the ingestion of endless quantities of royal jelly. The only image in her head was that of flying across the countryside, alone but not alone because she was at the head of a great procession of her kin: hundreds and thousands of bees, who would unquestioningly follow her wherever she went, and for as long as she desired to lead them on, to whatever destination.
From her position at the head of the swarm, her perceptions sharpened by prescience, Clarissa could see a land of many gardens and fields containing the finest nectar and pollen; a promised land where a new hive would be built and dedicated to the future.
On and on the seamless days wore, and still the Queen Bee lay on the massive plinth of the bed; not a morsel of food passed her lips, and she never spoke. And while the Queen’s bulk steadily shrank and her features shrivelled, Clarissa’s girth expanded, so that the room, which at first had seemed so spacious to her, now felt claustrophobic, to the point that she wanted to burst out of it like a seed from a summer pod.
One morning the drones-in-waiting came in as usual, and began to serve Clarissa her breakfast...though really, her days were one unending meal, and even at night she had platters of royal jelly within reach of the chaise longue to dip into, should hunger wake her up; which it often did.
When a drone went to the crabbed Queen in the four-poster bed, and whispered something in her ear, she showed no sign of having heard what was said, or indeed that she was alive.
Then the other drone approached, and the pair reached under the bed. With great exertion, they dragged out a huge leather-upholstered book adorned with a central knosp on the cover, and an inscription tooled in gold letters; heaved the tome over to where Clarissa lay, undid the brass hasps, and opened it in front of her.
For the first time since she’d arrived, Clarissa paused in her eating, and looked into the book. There she saw mounted pictures of many bees both old and young, including babies dressed in frilly and beribboned lace caps, and attended by worker bee nurses. As the drones turned the pages, it dawned on her that the images were of the royal family: she recognized the Queen, though she was then a much different figure to the sorry specimen in the bed.
And there, her features unmistakeable even as a baby…was Clarissa herself, in the same royal chamber as she was in now, wearing a little gown embroidered with the royal coat of arms.
Although there were many more pages, when the drones turned to the next one, and paused, she saw that it was blank. Then they closed the book and, straining, slid it back to where it was kept underneath the bed.
With a great cry, and a last burst of energy, the Queen Bee rose up stiff and straight, and made as if to launch herself at Clarissa. She had a horrible look of anger and jealousy in her face, and was grinding her mandibles and hissing. Then she fell back on the pillows, gave a drawn-out sigh, and closed her eyes forever.
The drones-in-waiting bowed solemnly towards the bed, and walked slowly backwards as they always did from the royal presence. At the double doors they bowed again and turned to open them. Shortly there came the sound of heavily treading feet, and as many of the Queen’s Household Guard as would fit into the chamber advanced, saluted the late Queen, and lifted her onto their shoulders. In a dead march, they bore her out to the accompaniment of a single drum’s funereal beat.
Despite their strength, it was with difficulty that four of the huskiest guards carried Clarissa to the regal bed, and deposited her there. Once she was installed, she surveyed her own figure, and perceived that she was well on the way to being as large as her predecessor had been when she had encountered her. After the senior drones-in-waiting reappeared, accompanied by others who were courtiers, they all made deep obeisances—Clarissa would soon be able to distinguish them from the tops of their heads—and waited for Her Majesty to command them to do her bidding for the first time.
She closed her eyes. Instead of the old buzzing, Clarissa heard the most pleasant sound of humming: she was flying over clover, fields of purple clover, followed by the black trailing streams of her subjects waiting for her to land, so that they could begin building the new hive that would house future generations of bees born of their new Queen.
Opening her lids, Clarissa addressed her audience.
“We claim our Queendom and accept your homage. As for the old woman, we order her carcass cast upon the nearest dunghil
l, for the ants to feast upon.
And now, whilst we find that a great weight of uncertainty has been lifted from our shoulders, only to be replaced by the burdens of office, we note that it has also settled about our hips. Consequently, before we are overcome by calories and child-bearing, we must choose a more suitable palace for our habitation.
So sound the trumpets and roll the drums! Summon the bees, that they may look upon our person, and swear an oath of fealty ere we depart. Prepare to swarm, O my people! Prepare to swarm in the name of Queen Clarissa!”
’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Many more days passed, after he had declined Steerforth’s invitation to tell a story, before the youthful Impatient Sorias spoke again. It was now 1st March, 2033 and remarkably, although there had been considerable turnover on the ward, Steerforth was still Speaker.
Not only that, but all of the Impatients had survived who had been present on the nights that the triplets, Stent, Suture and Stitch, had obliged the community with the four stories of Humbert, Ruby, D’Oyly, and Clarissa.
The exceptions were Stent, Suture, and Stitch themselves, who were gathered to their people on three successive nights following the last of the tales.
Despite there being no evidence of a change in the Minotaur’s policy, day after day the old brigade survived as one after another of the new intake was eliminated. After a week or so, by unspoken common consent, the others ceased to remark upon the phenomenon, for fear of breaking whatever spell had been cast over them.
Not all were grateful for the reprieve, being mistrustful of an incipient expectation that they might survive the six weeks remaining before the fateful day of 13th April: Doomsday, when they would, absent a breakthrough on the part of Director Bonvilian 4285D or some other entity’s part, receive their quittance on equal terms to those of their oppressors.
It was in this highly charged atmosphere that one night after lights-out, without a word from Speaker Steerforth calling for a vote upon whether the ward was in the mood for a story—which would be the first since the second of the Bee tales—Sorias began the narrative he had undertaken to tell at the time of his choosing.
Steerforth uttered no objection to the irregularity, but remained slumped in melancholy like the rest as Sorias began speaking.
As before, the boy spoke in a pleasant, resonant voice, and there was a phlegmatic clearing of throats around the ward, as minds awoke and creaking bodies shifted into poses conducive to being as comfortable as possible while paying attention.
‘What I’d like to share with you,’ said Sorias, ‘is an episode in the life of my aunt: Lady Eugénie Beauvais Plantagenet, who was the daughter of an earl.
‘As I mentioned before, it is a long story, and I beseech Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos, the three sons of the Greek god Hypnos, or Somnus as the Romans called him, brother to Thanatos the god of Death, not to visit the ward while I am speaking.
‘But because in life one story often begins with another, I first need to tell you about how things ended for Lady Eugénie, some years after the events that I’m about to relate. Sadly she was an early casualty of the circumstances that have affected, and for the most part afflicted, not just us but everyone in the world.
‘As all know, when Central assumed control it usurped the power of every government, and killed those who occupied positions of authority in public office.
‘And although the impecunious relics of the aristocracy and upper classes were in no way still influential as societal figureheads or political leaders, Central’s newly created As, Bs, and Cs saw them as pernicious symbols of an intolerable ancien régime, who must be destroyed before the oligarchy could be assured of complete control of rulership.
‘One of the first edicts to be issued from Central headquarters, and ruthlessly enforced by State police, was that landowners were to be evicted from their ancestral homes, and stripped of their titles and assets. They were assigned jobs cleaning the streets, and removing garbage and waste, and were treated as pariahs with no rights.
‘Since they were unpaid, and had no money left of their own to pay for housing and food, the late members of the noble classes were compelled to live in overcrowded hostels, where they slept on pallets, and ate whatever they were able to cultivate in small allotments, and cook on the stoves that also provided what heat and hot water they were able to gather sufficient fuel to generate.
‘Begging, in addition to going against the grain of these individuals’ characters, was illegal and punishable by summary execution on the street.
‘Because they’d been thrown out of their mansions without time to pack, these once proud people had nothing to wear but the clothes they were in. When these quickly wore out, being at one time or another fashionable rather than designed for hard labour, their owners mended them as best they could; which was badly, because other than stitching the odd sampler or embroidering a handkerchief they had no practice in it.
‘Holes that were too big to stitch or darn, they patched with rags; and when holes appeared in the rags they patched them with patches from their patches.
‘Although Lady Eugénie Beauvais Plantagenet was a healthy woman, her constitution wasn’t strong enough to spend long days sweeping streets, and living rough in the cold and wet. Her impeccable manners meant that others took easy advantage of her, stealing her food, and forcing her to do more than her share of work.
‘Being small and skilled in concealment, I was able to slip my aunt an occasional bag of provisions, blanket, and article of clothing; but the police were ever-watchful, and her eventual death from hunger and exhaustion was inevitable.’
Sorias paused before continuing.
‘That sordid business, however, is not my subject. Instead I wish to take you back to a much earlier period in the life of Eugénie Beauvais Plantagenet, or Aunt Jenny as I called her, when she was also living in a difficult situation…albeit one very different to the mercifully brief circumstances that ended her life.
‘Her ladyship was not my real aunt. As an orphan who’d been adopted at birth by one of the servants in the castle where she lived all her life, I was fortunate in that Lady Eugénie took a liking to me as a child, and insisted that I regard her as my aunt in every way but blood as I grew up.
‘At this time, her ladyship had been sole occupier of the castle for twenty-five years, since the demise of her husband, a choleric businessman who, amongst the other persecutive pursuits that benefited no one but himself, was devoted to hunting big game.
‘Lady Eugénie’s husband was killed upon his being recognized, from an open-air enclosure at Regent’s Park Zoo, by a male Bengal tiger that he had wounded and lost in a forest in India; and which had subsequently been caught by natives, easily because the injured animal was incapable of fending for himself, treated, and sold into captivity.
‘The beast, despite a gammy leg caused by Eugénie’s husband’s bullet, leaped across the wide deep trench that separated him from the man who had shot him, and mauled him to death. Then he licked a young boy’s ice-cream, jumped back into its artificial habitat, and went to sleep.
‘Of interest was that the Zoo authorities, working in conjunction with the police, were never able to trace the perpetrator of the assault upon the erstwhile huntsman.
‘The events that I will now proceed to tell you about, are those which Lady Eugénie Beauvais Plantagenet, my “Aunt” Jenny, recounted to me. They concern how, many years before when she was still not twenty-one years old, she came to meet a formidable witch, Dame Hecate: the same Hecate who was so integral to otherworldly matters of great moment, which in bygone ages were universally acknowledged, but are now disbelieved, ignored, and forgotten.
‘For Hecate was the patron of witches, and founder of witchcraft; and in the course of her short acquaintance with her...although she never became a worker of magic and spells herself, nor a dealer of them like W.S. Gilbert’s fictional title character John Wellington Wells in the opera The S
orcerer...Jenny learned something of the concealed arts and those who are qualified to practise them.
‘The day when my beloved aunt sat me down and told me her adventure is etched in my mind. I was sitting across from her, on a cushioned wicker seat at a stone table on the terrace outside her private quarters at Dragonburgh, her ancestral castle in Northumbria, surveying the panorama that surrounded it from under a large umbrella.
‘It was the rarest of sunny afternoons on a hot summer’s day. Jenny was wearing a long dress of colourful cotton, the maid was drowsing on a chair in the background, and a herring gull was perched on the balustrade with one eye on us and the other closed. There was a reminiscence of breeze, the sea was halcyon to the horizon, seabirds wheeled and keened high in a cloudless sky, and there was a faint plash and draw of small waves on the shingle of the beach far below.
‘This was the last time that my aunt Jenny and I were together in a natural setting. The following morning, Central’s guards arrived unannounced at the lower gates, and the Captain began shouting for Lady Eugénie Beauvais Plantagenet—he was not so polite in his form of address—to come down immediately.
‘I came to believe that Aunt Jenny was aware that day of what lay in her immediate future, and was the more determined as a result to communicate to me what I am about to tell you. The State police were already known to be combing the outreaches of the island for remnants of the aristocracy, and other dangerous elements of society, in order that they might be hauled away for “declassification and processing”.
‘But today, like the tranquil scene before us she was the picture of serenity; and it seemed to me that, rather than my aunt being influenced by it, the environment on this occasion was content to be her subject and take its mood from hers. She was sipping tea from a Chinese porcelain cup, alternately gazing out to sea and watching me with amusement, as I downed homemade lemonade, and ate my way through several plates of sandwiches and fairy cakes.
